There is no easy way to find reasonably priced parking spaces in a busy city. Metered parking spaces represent less expensive parking alternatives than paying for garage parking, lot parking or valet parking. Available metered parking spaces can be impossible to find, however. The driver usually either wastes time driving around the area looking for an open space, or abandons the search, paying a large fee to park in a garage, or to use a valet parking service. It would be greatly advantageous to be able to provide a driver looking for a metered parking space with an on-board parking space finder of available on-street parking, and with a competitive edge over someone without such a parking space finder.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,293,163 to Kakihara, et al., entitled, "Navigation Apparatus for Vehicles", describes a system for finding garages or other parking facilities with available parking spaces. It provides for the display of available parking information in map format. This vehicle navigational system patent does not address the problem of locating available on-street parking. Instead, it addresses the problem of locating parking lots with available spaces. Parking lots in congested city areas are not very cost effective, and they may not be in close proximity to the driver's destination. The patent does not direct drivers directly to an available metered space, a less expensive alternative, but simply to a large parking lot where they will have to search for an available space. In addition, the Kakihara map display only directs the driver as far as a parking facility. The driver still must navigate around the parking facility to locate an available space.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,432,508 to Jackson, entitled, "Technique for Facilitating and Monitoring Vehicle Parking", describes a scheme for finding available parking spaces in garages and other parking facilities. It provides for the display of available parking information at the entrance of a garage and makes a provision for a light source to be mounted above a parking space to indicate its availability. Remote access to the data is provided by a dial-up telecommunication interface. Because the technique described operates over a wireline medium, it does not lend itself to being easily deployed in a wide area. Also, because parking information is never provided to any device within a vehicle, drivers still need to navigate through a garage to locate available spaces.
Parking meters with sensors, parking meters with transmitters, and navigational equipment receiving and displaying external information are well known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,442,348 entitled, "Computerized Parking Meter", for example, describes a parking meter utilizing an ultrasonic transducer to detect when a car is occupying a parking space. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,454,461, entitled, "Electronic Parking Meter and System", describes a parking meter utilizing a sonar transducer for parked vehicle detection and radio means for receiving billing information.
At present, there is no on-board vehicle navigational system that delivers accurate and real time metered parking space information for access either from a central location, or directly by a vehicle, upon entering a specific geographic area. It would be a great advantage to drivers in busy cities to be able to do so.